Amazon Prime Music

Are You Using Amazon Prime? Here Are A Million Songs For Free.

Amazon Prime users rejoice. Amazon.com has joined the music-streaming business and is advertising "over a million songs" available for streaming to Prime users. Apart from free two-day shipping, Instant Video, and a free e-book renting service, Amazon has added yet another reason to give them $99 a year.

Tens of thousands of albums ranging from Beyoncé to Bruce Springsteen are available through an online interface. We have yet to see details about a streaming app, but the sound of ad-free playback is promising (We're looking at you, Pandora). Users can also check out curated Prime Playlists and download them for offline listening on their smartphones.

The release of Amazon Prime Music comes less than a week prior to a mysterious event, which is said to be the launch of a brand-spanking-new glasses-free 3D Amazon smartphone. We can only speculate if the two are related. It would sort of make sense, considering that mobile-friendly music streaming services such as Spotify and Rdio have gained significant popularity in the last couple of years.

But Amazon Prime Music has a long way to go until it will be able to compete with the likes of Spotify and Rdio. Most notably, one of the biggest music industry leaders, Universal, has said no to the service. Universal is the largest music corporation in the world and owns the copyright to a vast collection of music, so you're gonna have to make do without your daily breakfast Bon Jovi tunes, among others. Also, sorry Canadians, but it's a no-go north of the border.

In any case, this new service shows how much Amazon is fueling its efforts to become an even bigger part in people's lives. Not only can you order your groceries from them using a magic stick, and have them delivered using drones (well, at some point in the future anyways) using same-day delivery, while you catch up on The Sopranos on your Fire TV using Amazon Instant Video.

It is a valiant effort, but time will tell if they are able to compete in a pretty saturated music-streaming industry. But then again, Jeff Bezos is unlikely to stop poking his nose into fast-growing industries any time soon. We're sure Universal won't be able to look away forever from the estimated 28 billion dollars in his pocket.